I read a story on the Fox News Channel about the Tea Party's desire to replace speaker Jim Boehner with someone more to their liking. My reaction is huh? Who do they expect, Ron Paul...oops. Perhaps even Paul will be too liberal for the Tea Party now-a-days. Perhaps the Tea Party is putting the cart before the horse. Let me explain why.
Federal Revenues are at a 60-year low when adjusting for inflation. Bush era tax cuts do not even come close to explaining this. When you have 14 million people collecting unemployment insurance and not paying payrolls taxes, that explains some of the problem. When people are concerned about jobs, they will spend less money on other things. The means that revenues coming from taxing corporations will be lower. Energy prices are high, which means that there is less money for corporations and individuals to spend on other items. Finally, and probably most importantly is that our trade deficit is near record levels. This means that so much of the money that we do spend heads overseas and the opportunity to tax corporate profits and the income of those employees is lost.
Until these revenue problems are solved, realistically, it will take 20 years or so to balance the budget. Not to have patience in this matter will mean cutting every new federal program inacted since 1950. This includes Medicare, Medicaid, NASA, the Peace Corps, WIC, School Lunch...the list goes on and on. Doing this will cost every single elected representative their seat in Washington. To a Tea Party member, cleaning house sounds like a real good thing. Cutting all of these Federal Programs sounds just fine. But it is not. There any many Tea Party like people in both houses of Congress. They too will lose thier jobs. Every head in Washington will roll.
Why? You will make the economy worse, not better. Nothing cleans house in Washington like a poor economy. Just ask Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush.
Replacing revenue is the #1 priority. Getting people back to work. Getting people to spend money. Keeping jobs in the US. Lowering fuel costs. Working for more balanced trade. Using more domestic energy and resorces. This will help restore revenues and help fix the economy.
The second item for Tea Party members to consider is that Harry Reid is still in charge in the Senate. Anything and everything too conservative that is passed in the house has a road block. If the Tea Party is serious about extreme fiscal reform, they need to do two things before they attempt to really push thier agenda. First, they need a Republican in the White House. Second, they need a fillerbuster-proof majority in the Senate. This needs to be accomplished before there is any effort to replace Boehner.
It reminds me of a game where one team lost 56-52 and people were calling for a new starting quarterback on the losing team. You scored 52 points and lost. The quarterback is not the problem. Jim Boehner is not the problem right now. The problem is Barack Obama and Harry Reid. That is who the Tea Party needs to focus on replacing at the ballot box next fall, not Jim Boehner.
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